The Stoke Mandeville team include a specialist psychiatric team equipped with Nokia-resistant body armour, and a consultant Proctologist, who will be trying to discover where the PM's next reshuffle is going to come from.

One of the unanswered questions following Blair's recent reshuffle is whether Prescott's successor, Ruth Kelly, will display the same enthusiasm for the regionalisation of England, to whether the project will mark-time or even wither on the vine.